Gilman: Colorado’s Cliffside Toxic Ghost Town

High on Battle Mountain, nearly 9,000 feet up, a cluster of buildings sits right at the edge of a cliff about 600 feet above the Eagle River. That’s Gilman. The town began in 1886, during the Colorado Silver Boom. In 1912, the New Jersey Zinc Company bought the main mines and the town itself, and Gilman became a company town built around the Eagle Mine. Workers dug zinc, lead and copper out of the mountain, along with silver and gold. By 1970, the mines had produced 858,000 tons of zinc and 148,000 tons of lead. The mining left behind about 8 million tons of waste and soil laced with arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc. Runoff caused large fish kills in the Eagle River and threatened drinking water downstream in Minturn. In 1984, the mine closed and the town was abandoned. Wikipedia says that was by order of the EPA, and Vail Magazine says the EPA ordered out the remaining residents after most had already left. In 1986, a 235-acre area was placed on the federal Superfund list. Cleanup began in 1988: crews plugged and flooded the mine, capped the waste and built a treatment plant that still filters heavy metals out of the water. Plans to turn Gilman into a private ski resort came and went in the 2000s. Today its schools, homes and offices stand empty and covered in graffiti, and the road in is chained shut. You can only see it from the highway.